Embrace the Dull

My cat Jake is such an asshole

Our friends John and Debra just had a baby (aaw) so we (and by we I mean Liz) bought them baby presents. This morning Liz was wrapping them and preparing the gifts to be sent.

Sound nice, right? Wrong.
 Liz was using ribbon and bows to add some flair that 4-week-old infants really appreciate when Jake (pictured), who can't hear the sound of ribbon without going totally fucking berserk, proceeds to freak the fuck out.

He chased Liz and her package (heh) around the apartment, just dying to sink his teeth into that sweet, sweet ribbon.

Finally, in a move usually reserved for when I unwittingly reveal which of her friends I find the most attractive, she locked herself in the bathroom.

Jake is a dick.

I'm injured

Yesterday in a dramatic play-at-the-plate I was called out (questionably) sliding (headfirst) while attempting to turn a triple into a HR during an intramural softball game.

Later I badly sprained my ankle leaping for a hit over first base.

I think to ask "are these or are these not the actions of an out-of-shape jackass who runs around once a week only to injure himself and burden his wife?" is to miss the point.

The point is that my ankle is killing me.

Liz went out last night to buy me crutches so I could move to-and-from my email while she did everything else. Unfortunately the human-height for which the crutches are designed maxes out at 5'10" leaving me with what appear to be joke-crutches. On top of all this, Jake, Holly and Emmett now see me not as an injured payer-of-rent burdened with Klown Krutches, but a deformed freak requiring a robotic exoskeleton to ambulate. As such they flee from me in terror.

Alas!

AAAND, I am fatigued because Liz and I stayed up to till 3:00 a.m. to watch The Fugitive which, like Hoosiers, I have to watch every time I see it on TV.

What a day!

Dave, WTF?

I've been pretty lax w/r/t posting lately and for that I am sorry - but my excuses are many and they are convincing.

For one thing, for the past 2 days Emmett has had the Hershey squirts. This condition has required many walks that have weighed heavily on me. The walks have also taxed my ability to pretend-to-be-distracted-by-something-as-Emmett-does-an-impression
of-a-salad-shooter-on-someone's-flower-bed.

Emmett's HS's have cleared up so I can post.

But there are other things....

Earlier this week (Monday and Tuesday) I took a whirlwind trip to LA to look for jobs.

"Jobs? Why?"

"Liz and I are moving there?"

"But you never mentioned that, you fart-knocker"

"I know, I know - but it wasn't exactly written in stone and plus I had people that I had to tell directly (like my mom) before she read it on my blog - you understand"

"Yeah - did you find a job?"

"I did"

"Any good?"

"Not bad"

"Cool - Quiet Library is staying together right?"

"Of course, and that deal we have is inching toward completion - we're all really pumped"

"Are the guys in QL annoyed that you're moving?"

"Kind of"

Anyway, so last week I was in LA and I stayed with my friend Heather and her two roommates. Not only did she let me stay with her but she drove me to my job interviews and to check out a couple of apartments.

Heather is pretty bad-ass. She's also moving to Hawaii.

OK, so Here's the Fucking Deal

On Saturday (7/14) Liz and I are having our stuff shipped to LA and then packing Emmett, Jake and Holly into a van and driving to the West Coast. This is important as:

1) It's an idiotic way to travel and

2) I will be posting very infrequently but

3) I will totally be posting to my photo blog located here

So I will be posting this week, albeit intermittently, so take this with you...

I'm leaving New York...

Quiet Library remains intact, nay, successful...

Jake is a bastard...

Emmett's Hershey squirts have been corrected (rectified?)...

Liz and Emmett are getting along...

We are very excited...off to Los Angeles...

 

I'm Hellabusy - here are a few updates

1) Quiet Library has more meetings this week and next week with websites to produce original content - you know what websites don't have? Money. Maybe that's why they keep contacting us - we have so fucking much in common.

2) Liz got into a play - horray!

3) This morning I was helping her read lines, one of the characters (not for the play but for this acting class she's taking) is a big Pink Floyd fan and kept calling them "The Floyd." I wondered why the writer would choose to have the character be a fan of a band and apply to them a moniker that no fan uses. The Floyd? Maybe it was a joke I missed. Or maybe the writer is an asshole.

3) Jake took a rumpledumpskin last night that smelled like flesh of the undead - it woke me up out of a dead sleep.

4) That sleep part was a lie - but he really does take huge dumps.

5) The other day my boss (this old That guy) told me that he knew I was rich.

"Why would you say that?" I asked.

"Because you're so ugly, and Liz is so beautiful."

In a way I think he complimented me (apart from calling me ugly).

6) Check out the new photoblog I have - lower left-hand side

Gotta run - bye gang.

This is a, uh, terrible name for a website

http://www.therapistfinder.com. I think bizarro Sean Connery came up with it.

This one isn't any better...

...or this one...

Well, this weather is total bullshit. I came home to have something to eat and, after making a pot of coffee, spilled grounds all over the floor.

The events that followed can be best expressed with this haiku:

I vaccuumed up the coffee
Jake got scared (inset)
Meow meow meow me

.
.

Then Liz came down to my office and picked me up and we had dinner - here's a picture of us in the elevator.

Here's something [else] that troubles me about the whole 72 virgins thing

The other day my friend JP told me about a comic he had seen - the comedian had a joke to the effect of "I'm not sure I'd want 72 virgins, I mean, I don't want a bunch of skanks, but also not the kind of girl that gets upset by a little cum in her hair."

Yes, that's graphic, but he makes a good point - bear with me.

It led me to ponder why they were virgins in the first place - are they like, angel virgins? Or zombie virgins? Or just girls that died virgins? and if the third, were they icy girls? Or boring? Did they talk too damn much? Are they really homely?  Do you suppose your garden-variety suicide bomber enters into this sort of internal dialog prior to killing a bunch of people or does he suppose that The Prophet (PBUH)  is sitting on a bumper crop of un-fucked Penelope Cruz's just waiting to ride his politically-disenfranchised junk?

Further to this, Is negotiation an option?

"Look" they might argue, "keep the half-gross of barkers, give me Natalie Wood and Sharon Tate. Virgins? No, but it's my damn paradise and I was the one that blew up the damn bus."

I think I would open with that and haggle down to, say, Anne Bancroft, Barbra Stanwyck and Pauline Kael (for conversation).

And the end of the day, I really don't know.

ANYway, all that led me to the real question which is: What's the deal with female suicide bombers?

As discussed, few men want to slog through a big pile of virgins, so can you imagine a woman with 72 virgins? 72 awkward 15 year-old dorks serving as divine reward for taking out a mezzanine in Tel Aviv?

I'm still waiting to nail my first 15 year-old boy, so I can't draw from personal history. I would conjecture, though, that it's a pretty lousy experience. It's a lousy experience for another 15 year-old - imagine what it's like to be a woman of the world, say, 31-years old. She's been with a few guys, traveled a bit, looking for something to do on a Friday, the girls are all with their fellas and she can't bear the thought of goat again -  so she decides to detonate herself in a Jerusalem cafe.

Suddenly, zap, she enters the sweet hereafter, enjoying milk and honey in a martyr's paradise, on her left is the Prophet (PBUH), on her right, Abraham...Allah gazing down proudly. Then....

Randy Lifshitz (age 17) from Decatur approaches her in a tuxedo -  his cummerbund matches the dress she discovers she's wearing and then ... (bassline intro) ... clumsy sex in the backseat of Dr. Lifshitz's Le Baron.

Allah Akbar, I guess.

Cooper tells fart story to TV people

Possibly locks up short-term success for QL.

Yesterday we met with some more TV people and in pitching one of our ideas, Cooper told the Kofi Annan fart story (it was relevant to the pitch).

They loved it, we loved it, everyone loves it. Who among us doesn't love a good fart story, for God's sake?

Anyhoo - the meeting went really, really well. Hopefully some coin will come our way.

Bad News

I almost threw Holly (my cat) out the window, this morning. Here is my rendering of our earlier conversation:

Holly, "I want kibble, asshole"

Me, "We only have wet food, and if you think I'm walking to [the pet food store] Whiskers to buy you kibble, you're out of your mind. Anyway, it's 7:30 in the morning so they won't even be open."

"KIBBLE!"

"How about Turkey and Wheatgerm?"

"This is bullshit, this is why Jake and I prefer Liz"

"Oh, my bad Holly, here's some kibble" (at this point I reached in to my pocket and pulled out my middle finger)

"REAL FUNNY, ASSHOLE!"

"Oh, I found more" (second middle finger)

"I'm going to run around and scratch your magazines"

"Whatever"

"YOU WHATEVER"

Then she ran around and scratched my magazines. If Liz hadn't gotten up to ask what the hell was going on, Holly may have well ended up on 5th street trying to buy her own damn kibble.

Whatever, Holly.

Quiet Library inches slowly toward, um, something

I feel like every time I drop QL news, lately, we're about to have a meeting that leaves me disappointed - well, this time is slightly different. This time we have a meeting that hasn't disappointed yet. Also, this time while we don't have an actual date, I'm told by the LA people (heh, I said "the LA people") that it's sometime next week. Further, this time we have the actual name of the person at the network with whom we're meeting.

Baby steps, dog, baby steps.

Tonight we got together and knocked around ideas for an advertising pitch that we have been offered (rather, we have been offered a chance to pitch something, we haven't been given anything. And by anything I mean money).

Right now it's 2:18 in the morning and I'm wide awake. It could be the anticipation, it could be I feel too sexy in my flannel pjs, it could even be the gallon of coffee I drank at our writing meeting - either way I am going to be hurting tomorrow.

Liz, Holly and Jake are asleep together in a ball in the bedroom - I don't know how Liz sleeps with the cats on her chest, I'd be sweating like a pregnant nun. Liz is clearly cooler than me, in every conceivable sense of the word.

We've also retooled our website - Greg knocked it out on Google pages and I think it looks great. Please refrain from making comments about the front page featuring our crotches, I assure you that the jokes have been made and feelings have been appropriately wounded.

We get money every time someone watches that Myspace Cops video (the one on the first page of the QL website), so if you're an angry, joyless loner (about 45% of our fan-base) I encourage to view it a few hundred times.

I also encourage you to buy one of these --------->

(you know, for that special skank in your life)

Liz Returns to Power in Bloodless Coup

Holly has been deposed.

Sunburned Liz is back looking all tan and hot. Boo yah.

Holly has been removed from office, though she has retained her position as third-in-command (official title: Sergeant at Arms and Viceroy of Kibble).

Jake is Knave of Poop.

I do dishes and feed cats- more of a support staff position really - the guy behind the guy. Behind the girl. Under the cat. Over the river. Through the woods. Or whatever.

Conference call with agency tomorrow - meetings with TV folks as soon as next week.

Liz is back.

2007, looking up.

Liz Gone for Less than 24 hours. Life: Going down the shitter

I couldn't sleep in bed last night without Liz, so I slept on the couch. Apparently rest eludes me unless I can periodically wake-up a small woman by flopping around, snoring and/or farting.

Alack!

So I slept on the couch to the dulcet lullaby that is NY1 news.

Well, I went to bed at 4:00am with no alarm clock, so I think you can guess where this is going. I woke up at 10:15.

Not "got to work at 10:15." Woke up. And with Holly, no less, asleep on my back* (which is like having a heating-pad elevated to setting: Kenya. So I was drenched, and dehydrated, and when I saw the time, I said a bad word which startled Holly. She countered by clawing my back.)

(*2:55 pm Update - I just got off the phone with Jaime who raised an excellent point - if Holly is in charge, why the hell didn't she wake me up? In charge my ass!)

Auspicious start.

So I flew into that sweaty, stumble dance that is tearing-around-the-house-and-frightening-the-cats in a flurry of fatigue and bed-head. I assembled what appeared to be a harlequin outfit and flew out the door. I'm pretty sure I didn't wash the shampoo out of my hair.

(I hope someone makes a bald joke because I'm so in the mood.)

10:45am

I got a cup of coffee and a paper, checked my email on the subway platform, and waited for the train. 10:45 -- not bad considering my start; plus only one voicemail from my boss (a hang-up) and no email...

And then I dropped my Blackberry down the fucking subway platform, which fell onto the tracks and into some chasm that probably brought it closer to its Taiwanese origination than to its owner.

Fuck (x8).

So I went home to get my old stupid cell phone and returned to the platform.

As I stood there, glazed in sweat, considering the possibility of throwing myself at an oncoming train, I decided to text Liz. I bring up "Elizabeth" on this, my vacuum-tube powered Motorola, and accidentally bring up "Eli," formerly of Quiet Library, who quit the group last year in a heated email in which he said,

"oh, and fuck you Dave, you arrogant cock-smoking moron."

Whatever dude, I'm not a moron.

So I just got to work (yes, noon) and now must attend a racial/diversity sensitivity luncheon.

FUCK.

Liz doesn't get back for 4 more days. I'm so fucked.

5th Street Legislating Body: Constitutional Crisis

Liz left me this morning. But only for 5 days.

Liz won a cruise because she sold like nine-jillion things in some contest at work. And it's not some lame Carnival Cruise - it's a private yacht with a chef and only about 3 other people. I hope the other people are very handsome, successful men with wavy lawns of hair.

Anyway, that's only relevant because of what happened this morning. Liz got up at 5:00 to get on the plane to the Virgin Islands and kissed me goodbye (out of obligation, no doubt) and that was when my life began to unravel.

I heard her go in the living room and say goodbye to Jake and Holly. She said,

"Bye Jake, I love you. Bye Holly, you're in charge." The words echoed "...you're .... in .... charge..."

You're in charge?? Wtf??

I assumed that I would be in charge you know, because I can answer the door and I can open the refrigerator and I have, like, thumbs.

But nooooo. Holly's in charge.

This is complete bullshit.